robardin

Arsteel/Clod would also be a Lifeless Returned; does that count for anything? Maybe not, since he's not much larger than normal Lifeless the way a Returned would be to a person, though Denth didn't lose control of his suppressed Divine Breath or physical form as he died (only his hair changed color). Hmm, what if another Returned gave up his/her Divine Breath to create a "Lifeless" from a dead Returned like Blushweaver?

I like your thoughts on what the Feruchemical property of malatium might have been in Era 1, but are you suggesting that Ape Manton was a Ferring for F-malatium? There's a couple of problems with that, #1 being, where would he get the metal from? There's no easy source of atium in Era 2, which would make creating an alloy of it even more diffcult/rare. The other problem is something I'm still not 100% on - how/what atium functioned on the Wheel of Metallic Arts in Era 1, and/or Era 2. The "Ferrings" we see in Era 2 are an effect of the genes for Feruchemy mixing with those for Allomancy. Allomancy only naturally occurs in the Scadrial population as Mistings - all Mistborn stem from use of, or descendants of, someone who ingested a lerasium bead (or maybe descendants of TLR, who in some WoB was mentioned to have fathered children in his long life). One of the clues Preservation built in to his Master Plan was that "mist sickness" hit 1/16 of those affected especially hard - the atium Mistings.- as a hint that they had gained "the most powerful of the sixteen abilities". In other words, Preservation's plan involved swapping in atium into the "wheel" of 16 Allomantic powers, i.e., allowing for atium Mistings, for one of the metals it otherwise would have gone to. We see later in Era 2 that there are documented Mistings of each of the 16 known metals, so that means there are no more atium Mistings after the Catacendre, so that twiddle was undone by Harmony. Right? Now, did Preservation swap out atium for one of the four "undiscovered" metals of the FE, or atium+alloy for metal+alloy? I've always assumed the metal was cadmium: that the Final Empire had latent Mistings for chromium and nicrosil, but that TLR suppressed knowledge of those metals because Leechers and Nicrobursts would be very, very disruptive (a Leecher Misting could be dangerous even to him). And assuming he was aware of the Feruchemical properties of them metals, even more so. But, no "time bubble" Mistings, because Preservation swapped it out to create Mistings for atium and ... And what? Were there "malatium" Mistings? That seems unlikely, since atium would alloy with ANY of the base metals, right? So why allow for Mistings specifically of malatium? As for atium in Era 2, I don't think any Allomancers (or Feruchemists) without roots in Era 1 could make use of it any more. Marsh, Demoux, and that's about it, I think, plus any Mistborn that might occur again or still be around (the Sovereign). The "Mistborn" gene is like a "superuser permission" that can access all metals, full stop, but the Bands only contain metalminds giving the ability to use "all" sixteen Allomantic metals, the sixteen being the post-Catacendre Wheel of Metals, which doesn't include atium.

I think some of it is instinctive after only a bit of initial practice, like how hard to push and in what direction. And Steelsight would help in terms of finding anchors. But yeah, in Era 2 where a child being an Allomancer is no longer something you'd try to keep a House secret, I'd imagine getting formally trained at a novice level in a room with padded walls and stuff. With merit badges and pizza parties, why not.

As far as "kids running around with magical powers", I think there would be "private schools" run by masters of specific skills to train them in it - or at least, specific masters who would take on "generations" or classes of students at a time. On Nalthis, where there is basically one kind of native magic - Awakening - powered by the same source, Breaths, that anybody can acquire and amass (you don't have to be born with the right sDNA like you do on Scadrial), I could imagine there could be schools for the skill, since Breath is available on the open market for anyone to purchase (as Lemex did). It stands to reason that training in using Breaths would also be openly available, as long as you trusted the teacher to be worth the cost, that would probably be in the form of Breath. It's more interesting to consider what training there is for Allomancers on Scadrial, especially in Era 2 which is far more open and egalitarian than in The Final Empire. Just imagine L'il Wax going to the Coinshot Cubs assemblies on Saturdays, with his little bag of clips and that cute little neckerchief. Awww.

I tried to make it so the post's title isn't an Oathbringer spoiler in and of itself, but after re-reading Oathbringer after giving it a few months to settle in the back of my mind, I appreciated several things much more than I did the first time (which was partly due to reading the preview chapters as they were released, something I feel disrupted the feel of the pace of events for me, and partly due to my overwhelming desire to Get To The Plot Advancement Stuff ASAP). I could make a list of things like that - such as my much better appreciation of how plausible it was that Shallan's mind was cracking in the way that it did, when the first read-through it felt much more awkward - but the biggest swing, oddly enough, was in my appreciation of the scene where Lopen swears the Second Ideal. The first time through, I read it as straight comic relief, because, well, it was Lopen. The Lopen. He was mugging for some injured soldiers, doing tricks with one arm (even though he now has two), and talks a bit about becoming a Radiant, and mentions that he'd been "trying to cry a lot, and moan about my life being so terrible, but I think the Stormfather knows I'm lying", to "crack" his soul more, when he casually speaks the Words of the Second Ideal - obviously not for the first time, since he screams at the SF about "Why didn't you listen earlier?!"... And has his Words accepted, with the burst of light, the frost-drawn Windrunner symbol, and everything. He is literally hopping mad, making a double-handed obscene gesture to the sky, and Rua, his spren, joins him in support (who even grows two extra arms to double-double on the gesture). It is a funny scene, to be sure. But.. It's also really touching. Because while it's funny to us, the reader, it wasn't a joke to the Stormfather. YOU WEREN'T QUITE READY. I remember laughing out loud the first time I read that, like it was a punch line. But the second time, on a re-read, I teared up a little. Because it's not like the Stormfather has a sense of humor, and was pranking Lopen or something. He was - can only be - dead serious. In the midst of the epic battle for Thaylen City, with Fused, Thunderclasts, Voidbringers parshmen singers, red-eyed humans, and even Odium himself making an appearance, Lopen had been desperately reaching for the Second Ideal, and drawing a blank. Because he really wasn't ready! He was grasping towards being like Kaladin was when he rescued Dalinar from his entrapment at the end of The Way of Kings, and "leveled up" in one of the most dramatic ways possible. But the Ideals are, like we saw in Teft's interpretation of the Third Ideal, tailored to the Radiant who swears them. And that's not who Lopen is. That's not his metier. Only now, in giving comfort, hope, and morale to injured soldiers who'd lost limbs, with his unique blend of self-deprecating and insulting humor, is he living, and not just speaking, the Second Ideal. Lopen has always been about being an indomitable source of humor, light, and hope - even as a one-armed bridgeman, a death sentence with a handicap - his high spirits and antics raised even those of Kaladin. Bringing that light to those wrapping themselves in darkness - that's who Lopen is. I will protect those who cannot protect themselves... From depression, from despair, from giving up. Thank you for what you do, Lopen. I look forward to seeing what your Third Ideal will be like.

So in (one of) the climactic scenes in Oathbringer, Dalinar does what Honor suggested in his visions to him and gets Odium to agree to a "contest of champions" for the fate of Roshar. A few questions come to mind. First and most basic - are the terms of the contest what Dalinar imagines? Odium phrases it as "As Bondsmith, you can offer this deal" - as if there were a standing clause in what binds him to Roshar that specified that a Bondsmith do it, or more likely (since the KRs were not created by Honor and the Order of Bondsmiths would not have existed before the Desolations began), that Dalinar is bonded to the Stormfather who is the "heir" to Honor as the biggest Splinter of him, the spren that was tasked with passing on the visions from Honor to a chosen recipient (Gavilar, at first, then Dalinar). Clearly Dalinar was thinking of the Alethi dueling tradition of single combat, with specified stakes. But Odium's agreement could be read one of two ways - agreement with the stakes that Dalinar just laid out ("your freedom if we win, our lives if humans win"), or agreement to a "contest of champions" according to some earlier compact where Dalinar is unaware of the details, including what exactly form the contest would be. Secondly - who is humanity's champion? Dalinar assumed it would be himself, as the issuer of the challenge, but then Odium went and designated him as his own champion - and Dalinar recognized that indeed, he had been so groomed for much of his life. So now what? By definition, no matter what Dalinar does, it would be a tie if he were BOTH champions in the contest. And he never named humanity's champion - his request, agreed to by Odium, was just to have the deciding contest at all. Odium naming him has his own champion suggests that Dalinar was "in play", which would also mean Dalinar could still pick someone else to be humanity's champion. Thirdly, who is Odium's champion, now? Dalinar's refusal to "give Odium his pain" was him refusing to fall under Odium's control, the way Amaram and Moash did. Does that mean Odium will have to choose someone else, or are there "no backsies" on his choice, and it's just too bad that his appointed champion is going to be working to lose on his behalf? Or... Did Odium technically choose Dalinar? Re-reading that scene, he never actually names Dalinar as his champion. He only points out that Dalinar fits all the criteria as to who he groomed to be his champion, as Nergaoul, The Thrill, consumes him, replaying all the gleefully violent acts from his past. Odium never throws that Pokeball and says, "Dalinar Kholin, I choose you!" And finally, when will the contest occur? When Odium has his little chat with Taravangian, he sees that the Diagram had predicted this scenario: How "Super-Genius Mr. T", "without access to Fortune, or the Spiritual Realm" as Odium noted, even knew about the possibility of a "battle of champions" between Odium and Dalinar is breathtaking. Odium does not dispute this assessment - which is not quite the same as admitting it is true, but let's take it as such. So, it is a "battle", which surely means combat mortal of some kind. It seems that Odium is bound by his agreement to the contest and its being binding, but the conditions are still left open - i.e., who the champions are - and that if he ever met with Dalinar again, he could force the deal to be completed. My call: Kaladin vs. Vyre/Moash. And... Storm it... Maybe Kaladin talks to him like he did to Amaram about how he still hurts... And Moash takes back his pain from Odium? Can he be redeemed? Or is that too obvious a storyline? It would probably depend on how we would get there in the next two books. What's that, you say? There are ten books in the Stormlight Archive? Yeah, but the way Oathbringer moved things along, I'm starting to suspect the "battle of champions" with Odium is the climactic element of "SA Part I" (Books 1-5), and the jump forward in time to the second quintet (?) is to represent how long it takes for the "final" conflict - possibly much wider in Cosmere scope than just Roshar - to bubble up and play out.

Well, the post and subsequent thread has delivered. My mind was indeed blown!

Also curious is what the Ministry did with these surreptitiously discovered atium-burning Seers. They worked very hard to keep knowledge of such Mistings from the public; yet as we see in Yomen's case, he is aware of what he is, even knowing the term "Seer" for an "atium Misting", which must have been coined by the Ministry. If the only goal of the Ministry was to keep knowledge of the possibility of Seer Mistings from non-Ministry people, why go flushing out Seers who otherwise wouldn't even know they COULD be a Seer? The obvious answer is: to harvest them hemalurgically for non-Mistborn Inquisitors to gain A-atium. In which case, why is Yomen alive and well and even in possession of the knowledge of what he is? The obvious answer is: because he was an obligator, possibly a high-ranking one (or from a high-ranking family), who could be trusted to keep that knowledge within the Ministry.

I think the "metal inside of everybody" concept you're thinking of comes from Marsh's POV about how Inquisitors could see the world around them with extremely detailed Steelsight, seeing even the trace metals in people's bodies - which I took to refer to iron and other minerals literally present in people's blood and bones. Not that Scadrialites are partly made of a blend of god metals or anything like that.

WorldhopAdvisor.com/Roshar (NalthisGrrl): Roshar (3 of 5 stars) - Many reasons to visit, but not to eat The weather is famously turbulent, and the food is lousy. Colors, will you miss the food back home! Pack some sandwiches if you come here, because unless you can afford pork (expensive), you're mostly going to be eating bugs of some size or preparation. Even the vegetables have names like "rockbuds". Not kidding! There's also this artifabrially produced thing called "flangria" that feels and tastes like mud, but is served up as meat almost EVERYWHERE. Ugh. I finally made it palatable by giving a melange of spices from T'Telir to this Herdazian woman cooking for me. I told her it was called "Flangria Helper". I might start a small business with this, so, no stealing my idea! On the plus side, Investiture more or less literally falls from the sky. So if you're feeling short of Breath, if you know what I mean, this place can be like a spa to which you'll want to Return again and again.

The setting for Kelsier's epic duel with the Inquisitor started out standard enough, then comes that terse reminder that this is a world of ash: ash which is bleak, dirty, depressing, and completely symbolic of the ugliness of The Final Empire. The handiwork of a murderous and tyrannical megalomaniac, who literally causes the streets to run with blood without a moment's misgiving. ...and yet which we discover later in the trilogy was also Rashek's desperate, and successful, gambit to save mankind and the world from Ruin. The original Mistborn trilogy not only contains uniquely effective plot twists in each of the three books, but also the overarching twist about the Hero of Ages that spans all three of them... But the most surprising twist of all is that I finished the trilogy, like Vin, genuinely respecting and appreciating the altruism and goodness of The Lord Ruler. Of all the things I didn't see coming, that's the one I can keep being amazed at with every re-read of Era 1.

I always wondered how the metalminds could record visual information like the star charts, anatomical drawings, and renderings of animals that Sazed Ascendant uses to rebuild the world. He said that each Keeper listened as a senior Keeper went through his copperminds and recited all the information for the junior Keeper to hear and record into their own copperminds; but even if the original Keeper (who saw the original work) had a visual memory of the charts or drawings, how would that end up getting orally relayed with any accuracy, especially over many generations?

LOTR: Nearly 3,000 years after being ganged up on, beaten, and finally robbed and left for dead, an angel finally recovers enough to attempt to recover his stolen property and regain his position, only to see it all destroyed by an obsessed and stunted madman he never even met.

But of course! Ati/Ruin got a raw deal!

Well, forms of AonDor are bound quite tightly to geographic location on Sel. So a Dakhor practitioner pretty much has to come from Fjordell. But hemalurgy is very portable. You could do the reverse, and make an Inquisitor of a Dakhor monk.

"A wily swindler cheats an old friend in a deal - first by trapping him for millenia, then by engineering his demise in a suicidal and manipulative plot."

Vin does it more than once, I think. I do remember that she Soothes everything away but fear, and then Riots the fear, when she forces Kliss to tell her what she knew about a plot against Elend at the last ball before the skaa rebellion broke out.

Sorry, it was a dated and very geeky reference on my part But about as good as any other meaning we have yet about “Vax” in the Cosmere

I'll say it's not a Secret History spoiler to throw out there that it seems likely that there are archaic VAX/VMS workstations in the Beyond, in at least one character's opinion, who would be in a position to have some better basis for expectations than others.

A very nice summary! One question - where is the info coming from about Ati and Leras having been close friends (even "besties") in their human life?

So you mean if like Marsh or Demoux burned atium for its Allomantic property, and charged one of those "Allomantic grenade cubes" that absorb Allomancy and releases it later? [EDIT: Which is a spoiler for Era 2 in general and The Bands of Mourning in particular... This should probably get moved to the Mistborn forum?]

I dunno. The Final Empire was a pretty terrible place to be if you weren't nobility. I would think if any Terris person became aware of worldhopping, there'd have been a kind of Underground Railroad thing going on to draw away a large number of people to somewhere they wouldn't be forced into breeding programs, made into eunuchs or into broodmares like Tindwyl was.

Another problem for spanreeded arrows - doesn't the "master" reed (the one whose actions are being replicated) get heavier than its remote pair? When operating a spanreed, the "active" writer is literally writing with both pens at the same time, feeling the remote one's weight. So if you used the master reed as a projectile weapon, you'd have to use twice the force necessary (assuming the "slave" one was identical in mass) to get the remote one to behave the way you wanted it to do, and without seeing its direction or effect.

It seems that spanreed technology, essentially that of paired, parallel motions of small objects via split infused gemstones of a specific kind, could be used for a number of things other than teletexting, though I suspect there isn't enough mass to a spanreed "pen" to allow for dangerously stabby motions, unless poison were involved. But it would be fairly ideal to use as remote device switches, right? Or triggers for traps an such. If you could manage to infuse the gems regularly, anyway - that's a limiting factor, in that absent a Radiant who could do walk-up infusions of Stormlight, you'd need to be able to expose the gems every now and then to a highstorm, so gems embedded in a wall or floor to trigger a hidden device or panel would eventually be problematic. I forget - do infused gems "run down" if not used, or is the Stormlight in them good forever until used? If they'd last until at least used once, you could still do a paired spanreed gem trick for a one-time throw of a trap door or mechanism that nobody would be expecting.

I don't think the "Allomantic Grenade" cubes would be an effective use of A-aluminum; I not even sure you could charge the cube with the Allomancy of burning aluminum, since by definition, as soon as you burn it, you don't have it any more. And if you could charge the cube, all that would happen is that the cube would disable itself after the timer went off. Whee! It's really the ultimate in useless powers, except to be able to Compound Identiy, whatever that would mean, if you managed to acquire the Feruchemical power for aluminum as well. On the other hand, what if you used A-gold to charge a cube? Would the cube see a double of itself, a version that could have been charged with something useful like a bendalloy speed bubble, and hate it enviously, while perceiving the other cube's smug superiority to the gold-charged version of itself?